This document provides an overview of 21st century literature from the Philippines and around the world. It discusses representative texts and authors from several regions in Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, and others. For each country or region, several influential authors are mentioned along with short summaries of some of their most notable works. The document aims to familiarize students with literary traditions and movements across Asia.

1. 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE
FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND
THE WORLD
TACURONG NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
2ND QUARTER, 2022 - 2023
Teacher Jenny’s Class

2. Hello, Philippines
and Hello, World!

3. Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, students
will be able to:
• Identify representative texts and
authors from Asia.

4. Attendance:
If you were to date someone you love
in one of the cities in the world,
where would it be? Why?

5. Activity 1:
Across the
Globe

6. Activity 1:
Across the
Globe
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
EUROPE
AFRICA
ASIA
AUSTRALIA
ANTARCTICA

7. Activity 1:
FOUR PICS,
ONE IDEA

8. Representative Texts and Authors
from Asia
Asia, the largest continent in the world, has
a vast literary tradition in terms of scope
and length of existence. Literature in the
Eastern hemisphere prospered and
mirrored the developments in religion, war,
and politics.

9. REGIONS OF
ASIA
EAST ASIA
SOUTH & SOUTHEAST
MIDDLE EAST
CENTRAL ASIA

11. CHINA
One of the world’s cradles of civilization, has
started its unbroken literary tradition in the
14th century BCE. The preservation of the
Chinese language (both spoken and written),
has made the immeasurable prolonged
existence of their literary traditions possible. It
has retained its reputation by keeping the
fundamentals of its identity intact.

12. CHINA
Poets like Du Fu, Li Po, and Wang Wei
of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the finest
era of Chinese literature, has produced
world-renowned literary works.

13. DU FU
He is also known as Tu Fu.
According to many literary
critics, he was the greatest
Chinese poet of all time. He
wrote the poem “The Ballad of
the Army Cats” which is about
conscription—and with hidden
satire that speaks of the
noticeable luxury of the court.

14. LI PO
He is also known as Li Bai, a
Chinese poet who is a competitor
of Du Fu as China’s greatest poet.
He was romantic in his personal
life and his poetry. His works are
known for its conversational tone
and vivid imagery. He wrote the
poem “Alone and Drinking under
the Moon” that deals with the
ancient social custom of drinking.

15. WANG WEI
He was a poet, painter,
musician, and statesman during
the Tang dynasty (the golden
ages of the Chinese cultural
history).
He was the established founder
of the respected Southern school
of painter-poets. Many of his best
poems were inspired by the local
landscape.

16. MO YAN
He was a fictionist who won the
2012 Nobel Prize for Literature.
His first novel was “Red
Sorghum”, and still his best-
known work.
It tells the story of the Chinese
battling Japanese intruders as well
as each other during the 1930s. It
relates the story of a family in a
rural area in Shandong Province
during this turbulent time.

18. KOREA
Korea’s literary tradition is greatly
influenced by China’s cultural dominance.

19. KOREA
Korea’s literary tradition is greatly influenced by
China’s cultural dominance.
As early as the 4th century CE, Korean poets
wrote literary pieces in Classical Chinese poetry
then transformations happened at the 7th
century. Hangul, Korean’s distinct writing system
and national alphabet, is developed in the 15th
century that gave new beginnings of Korean
literature.

20. KOREA
In contemporary times, the Korean War has
made a significant mark on Korean literature.
In 1950, the themes present in the literary
works are about alienation, conscience,
disintegration, and self- identity.

21. Ch’oe Nam-Seon
He was considered a
prominent historian,
pioneering poet, and
publisher in the Korean
literature. He was also a
leading member of the
modern literary movement
and became notable in
pioneering modern Korean
poetry.

22. Ch’oe Nam-Seon
One of his works, the poem
"The Ocean to the Youth” made
him a widely acclaimed poet.
The poem aimed to produce
cultural reform. He sought to
bring modern knowledge about
the world to the youth of Korea.

23. Yi Kwang-su
He was also the one who
launched the modern literary
movement together with Ch’oe
Nam-Seon. He was a novelist and
wrote the first Korean novel “The
Heartless” and became well-known
because of it.

24. Yi Kwang-su
It was a description of the
crossroads at which Korea
found itself, stranded between
tradition and modernity, and
undergoing conflict between
social realities and traditional
ideals.

25. JAPAN
It has a rich and unique literary history
even though it has been influenced by the
Chinese language and Chinese literature.

26. JAPAN
It has a world-renowned poetic genre
called haiku ( a short descriptive poem with
17 syllables) and the diverse forms of theatre
Noh (traditional Japanese theatrical form
and one of the oldest extant theatrical forms
in the world) and Kabuki (traditional
Japanese popular drama with singing and
dancing performed in a highly stylized
manner).

27. JAPAN
Japanese literature reflects simple yet
complex, imperfect yet abounding with
beauty – the traditional Japanese cultural
identity.

28. JAPAN
In contemporary times, Western influences
take part in the Japanese literature, specifically in
the pioneering of modern Japanese novels,
translations of the poetry, and reinventions of
traditional Japanese poetic forms like haiku and
tanka. Playwrights like Abe Kobo and Mishima
Yukio are Japan’s notable literalists.

29. ABE KOBO
He was a Japanese novelist
and playwright and also known
by the pseudonym of Abe
Kimifusa. He wrote the best-
known play "Tomodachi"
(Friends) which is a story, with
dark humor, reveals the
relationship with the other, and
exposes the peculiarity of human
relations in the present age."

30. ABE KOBO
He also won the 1967
Akutagawa Award. He also won
the 1951 Akutagawa Award for
his short novel Kabe (“The Wall”).

31. Kimitake Hiraoka
He is also known by the pen
name Mishima Yukio, the most
important Japanese novelist of the
20th century. He was one of the
finalists of the 1963 Nobel Prize for
Literature and won numerous awards
for his works. He wrote the novel “The
Temple of the Golden Pavilion” and
won Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri
Newspaper Corporation for the best
novel.

32. Kimitake Hiraoka
“The Temple of the Golden
Pavilion”, translated into the English
language by Ivan Morris, based on
the burning of the Reliquary (or
Golden Pavilion) of Kinkaku-Ji in
Kyoto by a young Buddhist acolyte in
1950.

33. Ryūnosuke Akutagaw
He was a Japanese writer and
regarded as the Father of the
Japanese short story. He wrote the
short story “Rashomon” that
recounts the encounter between a
servant and an old woman in the
dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern
gate of the then-ruined city of Kyoto,
where unclaimed corpses were
sometimes dumped.

34. Ryūnosuke Akutagaw
The Akutagawa Prize,
Japan’s premier literary
award was named after him
to honor his memory after he
died by committing suicide.

35. Haruki Murakami
He was a Japanese
novelist who won the
international award Jerusalem
Prize. He also won the Gunzou
Literature Prize for his first
novel “Hear the Wind Sing”.

36. Haruki Murakami
It featured episodes in the life of
an unnamed protagonist and his
friend, the Rat, who hang out at a bar.
The unnamed protagonist reminisces
and muses about life and intimacy.
Murakami’s work has been translated
into more than fifty languages.

37. Thank You!